Enabling Floating Offshore VAWT Design by Coupling OWENS and OpenFAST

Michael C. Devin (), Nicole R. Mendoza, Andrew Platt, Kevin Moore, Jason Jonkman and Brandon L. Ennis
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Michael C. Devin: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA
Nicole R. Mendoza: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA
Andrew Platt: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA
Kevin Moore: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA
Jason Jonkman: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA
Brandon L. Ennis: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: Vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have a long history, with a wide variety of turbine archetypes that have been designed and tested since the 1970s. While few utility-scale VAWTs currently exist, the placement of the generator near the turbine base could make VAWTs advantageous over tradition horizontal-axis wind turbines for floating offshore wind applications via reduced platform costs and improved scaling potential. However, there are currently few numerical design and analysis tools available for VAWTs. One existing engineering toolset for aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulation of VAWTs is the Offshore Wind ENergy Simulator (OWENS), but its current modeling capability for floating systems is non-standard and not ideal. This article describes how OWENS has been coupled to several OpenFAST modules to update and improve modeling of floating offshore VAWTs and discusses the verification of these new capabilities and features. The results of the coupled OWENS verification test agree well with a parallel OpenFAST simulation, validating the new modeling and simulation capabilities in OWENS for floating VAWT applications. These developments will enable the design and optimization of floating offshore VAWTs in the future.

Keywords: vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT); floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT); OWENS; OpenFAST; hydrodynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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